Surfers Paradise is delightfully trashy compared to Byron Bay. It's full of high rise apartments, casinos and sin city style nightclubs. I think one club is even called 'Sin City'. We've seen dozens of promotions girls walking down the street in gold lame bikinis or similarly skimpy getup. The hostel sent a limo to pick us up. It reminds us a bit of Vegas :-)

On our first day here we went for a wander round town and along the beach. We stumbled across a Nandos and as we just happened to have a discount voucher for Nandos on us we felt it would be rude to walk away. So we didn't. Afterwards we booked up activities for the next couple of days and got some beer in to watch the rugby world cup final at our hostel.

The next day we woke up late and headed into town for a surf lesson at the Cheyne Horan's school of surfing. Cheyne must have been busy (polishing his world championship trophies maybe?) as we were taught by someone called Pat, who was still very good. What neither of us anticipated was how much hard work surfing is. The surf boards are heavy and awkward and carrying them out to a suitable depth whilst trying to stop the onslaught of waves carrying them away is a workout in itself. Once we were about waist deep we had to jump on top of them and bob around lying down as we waited for a big wave to approach. At this point we were meant to paddle furiously towards shore, wait for the wave to pick us up, then jump to our feet and ride the wave back in one sweeping elegant movement. I must have been doing something wrong at first as I just seemed to be being pushed about this way and that by each wave that came along and after about ten waves or so would somehow arrive back on the sand, still lying down. Eventually I managed to catch some bigger waves that carried me all the way back in one go but I couldn't stop clinging to the board like a limpet. Jak was a little braver than me but kept wiping out and getting hit by the surf board whenever he attempted to stand up so I decided to stick with my horizontal method for most of the lesson. Thankfully, the instructor took pity on me near the end and came out with me (carrying my board too bless him), counted me into the wave and shouted 'go go go GO' into my ear. And somehow I managed to stand up and properly surf the wave all the way back in. Okay so I didn't turn the board or anything fancy like that but just standing up was enough for me :-) Jak managed to stand up for a few seconds as well and we ended the 2 hour lesson feeling quite chuffed with ourselves.

Yesterday we woke up aching all over (we must be so unfit!) and caught a local bus to Wet'n'Wild, one of the many theme parks that the Gold Coast of Australia is famed for. We chose to go to the waterpark rather than a regular themepark as it is so bloody hot here! The park is really good and we spent all day running from the wave pool to the lazy river (not so lazy when you're with Jak, that kid has ants in his pants) to the various water slides. My favourite ride was the 'black hole', a two-person tube ride in the pitch black. Jak's was 'tornado', a ride that dropped you in a four-person tube down a ridiculously steep slope and into a conical structure where you slid scarily far up and down the high walls on either side before splashing out the bottom. On the second to last ride of the day we fell out of the tube at the bottom and I now have the biggest bruise on my backside! I'm walking like an old person.

Today we are catching a Greyhound bus up to Brisbane, or 'Bris-Vegas' as the locals call it...